Breaking Bush

If there were a Mount Rushmore-style monument to offensive black comedians, you’d find Paul Mooney’s disembodied head up there alongside Redd Foxx, Richard Pryor, and Bernie Mac. Throughout the years, Mooney has been a head writer for the 1977 TV series The Richard Pryor Show, the head writer for the...

By Ric Delgado

August 8, 2013

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If there were a Mount Rushmore-style monument to offensive black comedians, you’d find Paul Mooney’s disembodied head up there alongside Redd Foxx, Richard Pryor, and Bernie Mac. Throughout the years, Mooney has been a head writer for the 1977 TV series The Richard Pryor Show, the head writer for the first season of In Living Color, an actor in Spike Lee’s Bamboozled (a movie about the revival of blackface comedy), and the character Negrodamus on Chappelle’s Show. But what distinguishes Mooney is his boundary-breaking style. From the stage of the Apollo, he told George W. Bush that he hated the Bush family, adding that Barbara Bush looked like the guy from the Quaker Oats box. Oh, and there was the time he said the Boston bombings were OK because only a few white people lost some limbs and no blacks were harmed. Though some people might find Mooney’s humor to be in poor taste, others think his unrelenting challenge to the status quo is refreshing. He’ll take his talents to the Miami Improv (3390 Mary St., Coconut Grove) this Thursday for a series of five shows that run through Sunday. Sunday night’s show begins at 8:30 p.m. Tickets cost $20, and there is a two-drink minimum. Visit miamiimprov.com or call 305-441-8200.
Sun., Aug. 11, 8:30 a.m., 2013

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